Tag: indoor gardening

Wondering what to do this winter to keep your hands dirty in the garden?Why not bring the garden inside. Growing tropical houseplants are fun and easy! I have 5 easy indoor gardening projects to get you psyched for spring.

1: Create a mini garden oasis in your window. Keeping a few indoor houseplants through the winter can be just what the doctor ordered. Growing tropical foliage plants indoors can have added health benefits. Ornamental plants like, Sansevieria, Snake Plants, Spathyphyllum Peace lilies, Boston ferns and Spider plants are a few beneficials that can act as air purifiers, removing toxins from the atmosphere in your home. Having greenery indoors also helps relieve stress and boost your mood as well. http://gardensonthego.com/garden-minute-bring-your-garden-indoors/

4: Make a Kokedama, the Japanese style of growing ornamental plants in the shape of a ball. Kokedama literally means “moss ball”. Plant roots are stripped clean and formed into a firm round ball using a bonsai soil blend. Wrap the ball in moss and tie with string. Kokedama are perfect for small spaces. They can hang in a window or placed in a dish or tray on a table or plant stand.

Kokedama

5: Add living wall art by mounting ferns. Vertical gardening is extremely popular! If the thought of having a massed wall of green foliage intimidates you why not start small. Try mounting a Stag horn fern. Stag horn ferns are actually Epiphytes, much like orchids and air plants. This unique group of plants don’t require soil to grow. They are easily mounted onto a piece of wood using moss, twine and a couple of screws to hold it in place.

Caring for houseplants indoors during the winter is much more challenging than outdoors. Controlled temperatures, shorter day length and forced hot air from our indoor heating systems leave the atmosphere dry. You also need to be mindful of cold drafts. Plants near drafty windows and doors result in dark brown sections on leaves. Plants struggle to push out new growth, foliage turns yellow and edges brown thus resulting in unhappy looking houseplants.

I avoid these problems by following a few simple rules…

Increase Humidity…plants love humidity, especially indoor tropicals. Make sure you keep plants away from forced dry heat vents. Increase humidity by placing the plant on a bed of moist crushed stones, cluster your plants together if possible, or mist the leaves 2-3 times per week.

Rotate…plants are phototropic, meaning they lean, or grow in the direction of the light. With day length slowing increasing each day, plants are stretching toward the brightest area, forcing a normally full healthy looking plant to have an irregular shape. Remember to turn 1/4 – 1/2 spin per week.

Water…wisely during the winter time. Take time to water your plants on a regular schedule. Keep a gardening journal to keep track of watering, misting and fertilizing your plants. This will help to minimize long dry periods and help prevent overwintering. Be aware of the water temperature. Believe or not water that is too cold or too hot can effect your houseplants causing leaves to yellow and curl. I always use tepid water during extreme cold spells.

Pest Patrol…be on the lookout for unexpected pest guests. Insects, like Aphids, Mealy bugs, Fungus Gnats, and Scale are the most common pests. Plants need adequate air flow, especially in extremely warm areas. Keeping temperatures between 62°-72°from night to day is ideal and helps to keep pests away.

Days are spent weeding, deadheading, harvesting and of course relaxing in the garden oasis you’ve created. If this daily routine is becoming a little too boring it may be time to get out and explore some of the display gardens in and around your area.

One of my favorite summer activities, especially late summer is to take a road trip to local gardens. Public gardens are a great resource for education and inspiration. It gives you an opportunity to see a wide range of plants and how they are used in the landscape. With so many great gardens to choose from I thought the Camden Children’s Garden is an ideal choice.

Located in Camden, New Jersey, the gardens are situated on 4 acres of land.

Valerie Frick, the director of education, tells me the gardens were started in June 1999. “It was born out of the Camden City Garden club, which is a community garden that has been in existence since 1985.”

The primary focus of the gardens and the children’s garden movement was to have a place where kids can run and play throughout nature. Frick says there are no rules in the garden, “It is important to have a fun place for children to do things that children like to do, climb, run, jump, play, explore and discover.”

The children’s garden movement wants to ensure that at a young age the children become familiar with horticulture. By encouraging them to walk on the grass and touch the plants they can feel free to explore and learn. Frick also states, “What children learn when they are young gets carried over to when they become adults.”

Some of the display gardens you will see are inspirations from a group of local landscape designers and gardeners. They even included ideas from the children in Camden County. Frick tells me they went into the Camden County school district and asked the children what would they want to see in a perfect garden. One very memorable request from a child was to walk on water, another was to have dinosaurs in the garden. Both are reflected in the interactive water fountain garden and dinosaur garden where they can learn about dinosaur bones found in New Jersey.

Other requests came from teachers wanting to bring story books to life. It was also important that the gardens reflect the important programs in the schools like educating children on how to grow vegetables in an indoor space. Frick says, they wanted to tie in the work they do in the community with the work they do in the gardens. They are a non-profit organization and operate on grants to keep the gardens going.

The Camden Children’s Gardens is an amusement park dedicated to the thrill of growing plants and vegetables. They even have their own garden themed merry-go-round. For more information go to www.camdenchildrensgarden.org.

For many people, gardeners and nature lovers alike butterflies have been an important part of the outdoor environment we live in.

These mystical creatures fluttering through our gardens have captured the attention of collectors for centuries, spending endless hours studying the growth cycles, flight patterns as well as the patterns on their wings.

In many cultures butterflies have a great deal of symbolism of hope and love as well as rebirth. In recent years the numbers of native butterflies have been decreasing, especially the Monarch butterflies. I wanted to know how home gardeners can help increase the population in our gardens.

I recently caught up with John Dailey of SkyRiver Butterflies at his traveling butterfly exhibit to talk butterfly cultivation. I even had the opportunity to help release a few for the exhibit.

Sky River Butterflies it the largest traveling butterfly exhibit in the world, with about 1,500 to 2,000 butterflies in the exhibit. The main objective is to educate people on their life cycle and how to cultivate more butterflies in our won gardens.

“People have to understand that butterflies are very short-lived creatures. It takes 40 to 60 days from egg to adulthood. Typically they will live from 2-3 days to 2-3 weeks.” They are dependent on their life cycle to reproduce. The opportunities for butterflies to reproduce are decreasing due to the amount of toxins being used in the agriculture industry. The host plants where they need to lay their eggs are not as available as they once were.

The key to bringing back butterflies like the Monarch is the right host plants, according to Dailey. The host plant is the plant to attract the larvae or caterpillars to the garden. For Monarch butterflies it is Asclepias incarnata, Swamp Milkweed.

Asclepias incarnata is a herbaceous perennial native to North America found in wet swampy areas. It can survive in a backyard garden as long as the soil doesn’t dry out. The Swallowtail butterflies have a long list of host plants depending upon the species. The Swallowtail caterpillars need pipevine plants.

“Each butterfly has a specific host plant. You want to surround those plants with high nectar plants,” he said. High nectar plants produce sugars that adult butterflies feed from. Studies have been done on to what exactly butterflies are attracted in terms of types of plants and colors. One plant in particular is Gomphrena, commonly known as Globe Amaranth. It is a wild flower that produces lots of nectar that attracts all butterflies. Plants like Dahlias are another great nectar plant. You want to look for plants with flowers that have a short neck, making feeding easier for the butterfly.

“Monarch populations used to be measured in billions, now it is measured in millions,” stressed Dailey. By adding a few simple native plants to our gardens we can help restore those numbers.